Flaming June in Chicago: May 25-27, 2002
PART ONE
They say it's half the fun--getting there. Thursday evening I was mostly looking forward to getting away. I didn't much care where I got to. Gary had just returned from a ten day trip to Alaska a week earlier and the couple of weeks leading up to the tournament were full of the usual flotsam and jetsam of family life; doctor appointments, choral performances, science projects (my 8 year old son 'invented' an electronic device which tells you when the dog's water dish is empty. When I looked at the scale and the loops of wires and the tiny light bulb that would flash on or off depending on the weight of the cup on the scale I asked "Why wouldn't you just look in the bowl to see if it's empty?" The boys look at me incredulously. "Mom," my young son shakes his head slowly "There are other applications." On top of the usual chaos the director of my daughter's preschool decided to fire an amazing teacher over an ideological rift that sliced this tiny community into two roiling factions, so when I wasn't hauling science projects to the elementary school in the rain I was popping blood vessels at the preschool board meetings and staying up late writing long open letters to the "Sunny Hollow Community." Thursday night I stood in front of my suitcase trying to figure out how to fit my beautiful new custom board into it while the 2 year old splashed around in the tub, the five year old plucked out Allegretto 2 over and over on the piano downstairs and Nate screamed out for help on his book report, which was due a week earlier. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure my husband was drinking a beer and reading the New York Times from his computer, taking full advantage of the unspoken rule where the parent going out of town must do as many child-rearing chores on their own until the taxi arrives as subtle payback for taking off. I gladly oblige, since Gary travels a helluvalot more than I do. I leave my suit case and SCRABBLE® board on the bed, grab Henry out of the tub and go down to help Nate. Jo is stuck on this one measure of Allegretto and keeps speed playing up to the tricky part as if she might be able to hurdle over it. "Slow down honey, figure it out." Nate has all of his book report pages spread out over the kitchen counter. He has sharpened several pencils down to two inch nubs. He is lying belly down over the counter stool dangling his arms and moaning. "Come on, sit up, where's your book?" He lifts his head for a second. "I don't have it." "Sit up, Nate. What do you mean you don't have it?" He slowly pulls himself into a sitting position on the stool. "Someone stole it." "What?" "They DID. Someone stole it out of my desk at school." "Don't say that Nathan. That's ridiculous, why would someone steal a Pokemon book out of your desk?" "So they don't have to PAY for it themselves MOM, why else???" "Nate, You lost the book," (he loses everything) "just admit it and let's get on with it." I start putting the pages in order, he lets his head drop dramatically to the counter. "Why did you do this to these pencils?" He yawns and mumbles into the countertop "I dunno." "Come on buddy," I pick up a stubby pencil, "Chapter 12: Goodbye Butterfree..." NSA take me away. The taxi was due to arrive at the house at 5:30 in the morning and by the time I crawled into bed Thursday evening and set the alarm for 4:45 a.m. (I ended up waking up every hour like I always do with an early flight and then at 4a.m. decided to just get up)the taxi could have been showing up to take me to Survivor: Antarctica and I would have happily gone along. With the exception of those katabatic winds, it would at least be pretty quiet. The flight left the Twin Cities on time, and because of the early hour was mostly empty. We arrived at O'Hare fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. I deliberately planned to arrive early on Friday morning. Sixteen hours ahead of my roommates to be exact. I was looking forward to some time alone in the room, where I intended to do nothing but drink tea, study words and take naps. Many of them. I get to the taxi stand and there is no line at all. The woman running the stand points to the first taxi in a line of about twenty, and off we went. Actually we went about five feet and then the driver pulled over. I had told him my destination three times and he couldn't understand. I wasn't sure if he was having language problems or direction problems, but I came prepared and offered him the map I printed out from Mapquest which gave blow by blow directions from the airport to the Chicago Days Inn Niles. He took the map but wasn't interested in using it. He had a black book that had directions written out in it. He looked at his book and then peeked quickly at my map and after a couple of minutes announced "Okay! No problem!" We made our way out of the airport and after about three minutes on the expressway the driver tells me "This book says one way, but we take a short cut!" and he pulls off the Touhy exit. I'm dubious. My mapquest map has some fairly lengthy directions, none of which mention exiting on the Touhy exit. The hotel is located at 6450 Touhy though, so I am thinking maybe he does know a short cut. We travel several miles one way and determine the street numbers are going down when they need to move up. We turn around and go the other direction for several more miles. At this time I notice my driver has an annoying habit of speeding up whenever he sees brake lights. At one point he slams the brakes on so hard all of my things go crashing into the divider that separates us. We go a little further and then he turns around again. He is shaking his head and mumbling something in his native tongue, then he looks in his rear view mirror and tells me "This is not right. Don't worry, you don't pay!" and he covers the meter with his hand for a moment. "It's your first day, isn't it?" I ask him. "Yes! My first day. No problem!" And he turns into a gas station. I assume he's going to ask for directions but he is going to fill his tank. I'm sitting in the back of the cab thinking this could be a good thing. Get all that bad luck out of my system now. Tourney should be a piece of cake if I pay my dues ahead of time like this. I was thinking it could be a good thing, and then as I listened to the driver fumble with the gas pump for ten minutes, until I finally felt obligated to get out and see if I could help, I was thinking it could also be an omen. As we pull out of the gas station I ask him if he got directions while he was in there. "Oh, no," he waves his had dismissively, "I go back, we start over, I use my book. No problem! I'm sorry. I know I'm giving you a hard day," And he flips the meter off. "We go back, don't you worry." And go back we did. All the way back to the airport. "I want to start from zero!!" and he seems very happy that we have this clean slate ahead of us now. He flips off the meter and then starts it again. I feel a sharp pain cut through my right temple. It's hot in the cab. The seats are so low I feel as if I'm riding in a bucket that I can just barely peer out of. I give a tiny wave to the woman running the taxi stand as we zip by her again, "It's me. The woman in cab 62. Save me." Traffic has increased now and I am feeling quite familiar with this bit of Illinois. The 50 cent toll booth, the train tracks, the lovely town of Rosemont with its big water tower painted to look like a giant rose. There is more slamming on the brakes and pulling out into speeding traffic and more blaring of horns. After about 15 minutes we get off the freeway and he shouts over his shoulder, "We are looking for HARLEM street!" He shows me the black book to prove his point. It isn't a map, just tiny paragraphs with general directions to get to different suburbs from the airport. I'm getting nervous again because he's mumbling to himself again and my mapquest map says nothing about Harlem or any of the other streets he's taken to get here. And "Here" turns out to be the side driveway of a furniture store. He pulled over when all the traffic behind us began to violently blow their horns while he crept along, wondering, no doubt, just as I was, where we were. "We are in Niles!," he announces to the furniture store window. "Do you know where the hotel is?" I am not yelling, but there is definitely lots of edge to my voice. "Oh." He grabs his black book. "It's hotel?" I realize then that those dividers are there to prevent passengers from grabbing the black books and beating the drivers over the head with them, which is the only thought that came to my mind at that point. "Can't you just go over to that gas station and ask for directions??" I'm begging him. "No!!" He slices his hand through the air. It's that genetic thing only men have the misfortune of inheriting- the you-will-never-be-able-to-ask-another-living-soul-for-directions gene. My husband has it too. I roll down my window. "Please..." For a minute I think I should just make a run for it. Get out of the cab and run to the restaurant across the street and call another cab, but then I realize my bag is in the trunk and knew he would not let me off that easy. I'm also still feeling a little sorry for him. His first day. I'm not in a hurry, thank goodness. I can be patient. And there is something irritatingly sweet about the way he orders me to check addresses from my side of the cab while we head down West Touhy fifteen minutes later. This was after he finally consented to go to the gas station for directions. And after he ran a red light through a very busy intersection. "Sorry lady, I know I'm giving you hard day!" Then just up ahead that beautiful, yellow, spiky, half-sun poking over a tree. Sanctuary. "There it is," I tell him. He jumps a little in his seat as if I really had hit him over the head with something. We are idling in front of the hotel doors. He has his head in his hands and is shaking it back and forth. The meter is up to $25. "I'm not paying you $25," I say to him softly. "No, whatever you think lady, whatever you want..." His head is still in his hands. "Well, I want to give you something for you trouble--" "NO!" he jerks up, "No, I give you trouble. I deserve nothing!" "It's okay, it's your first day...I understand." (sort of)and we figure out how much it would cost to take the trip if any of us knew how to get there, and I pay him and tip him. "You are very nice, lady. Thank you. I hope you have better day now" "You too," I tell him as I get out. It is heaven to stand on solid ground. "You going to make it back okay?" He assures me he will, and waves happily out the window as he drives away. I'm so happy to be at the hotel. When I mention to the woman at the front desk who is checking me in that I just had a cab ride from hell and she ignores me, I don't let it bother me at all. I would ignore me too. I must have looked slightly crazed, the way I kept taking deep breaths and running my hands over the countertop mumbling how nice it was to be there. "This is great...great to be here." I had been in the cab for almost two hours. I spent more time driving from the airport than I did flying from Minnesota to Illinois. I unpacked and went and ate my second breakfast at the coffee shop next door and went back to my room and pulled out my flashcards and ran through vowel dumps for about twenty minutes until I drifted off to sleep. Later I decided to get out and explore a little. I walked alongside the busy road. There was some manufacturing plant next to the hotel, then it looked like the headquarters for the YMCA and in front of that large building a replica of the leaning tower of Pisa. You could walk to the top if you wanted to. There was a small concrete pond in front of it where six geese floated about and then, even more confusing, a leaning telephone booth off to the left of the tower. I ended up walking down to the Target and buying some water and snacks and on the way back I notice a man waiting to cross the same intersection I was going through. There was no sidewalk and no other pedestrians around. As the man passed me I realized it was Joel Sherman. I swung my sixpack of water along and took deep gulps of the Skokie air and thought how funny it was that this man from New York City and this woman from Minnesota should cross each other's paths in the middle of a Chicago suburb on a Friday afternoon in May because of a board game. Jeez. I made it. Let the games begin.Back to top
PART TWO
I was worried about whether any of my roommates were going to show up. Sue called me late Thursday night to say Anne was probably not going to make it. I gave Sue all the phone numbers I had of Minnesota players who were driving down. I was hoping she'd make it, but I had no idea if or when. I knew Gaspard was due around dinner time. The solitude of the morning was wonderful, but I'm a fairly social person and was beginning to long for some companionship. A dinner partner would be nice, and since I had to miss club that week and hadn't had any time for online games I was really jonesing for some SCRABBLE®. I sat on the bed after my Target trip with a cup of tea. I stared at the phone and wondered what Sherman would say if I rang him up out of the blue. "You don't know me but...wanna?" I would need some sort of handicap of course. Maybe if he drank shots of tequila for every blank he drew. Obviously not enough blanks in the bag for that to be helpful. I took my board out and threw it on the bed. I would have to play one of my favorite opponents, myself. The game was definitely worth all the fodder it gave both Sue and Joe when they finally did show up and stood waiting for me to get my things together so we could go eat dinner. "So who won?" "Where's the clock?" "Who adjudicated challenges?" Ha. Ha. Ha. Dinner at Chili's and finally two games before bed. Everybody was wiped from all the traveling and wanted to be fresh in the morning. I made Sue and Joe wake up extra early. I wanted to have time for a leisurely breakfast and then get to the tournament site early so I could stake out a good spot for my board and have some time to grab another cup of coffee before we started. Every morning I would wake up at 6:15, shower and go get coffee from the lobby. Sue would stay in bed until the last second. She had crisp, perfectly articulated conversations in her sleep, but when I would crack the drapes a bit to get her going she would mumble incoherently and then ask me what time it was and then roll over and go back to sleep. "Time to get up Sunshine, let's go! Lot's of Scrabbling to be had today." She would stir, sit up a bit in her bed, stare down at her chest and mumble "Why do I play SCRABBLE®? Why did I come here? Why am I doing this?" I would jog the curtains open a bit more. "What are you talking about?" and clap my hands "This is great! Look at that crappy day out there, what else would you be doing?" Sue throws her head back into her pillow, "Sleeeeeping..." We finished breakfast at the diner next door at 7:30. Joe looked at his watch "Gee....we're barely going to make it..." "Okay, alright, so we get there a little early, what would you be doing otherwise?" Sue timidly offers "Sleeping?" I never live it down that we arrive at the tournament site a half hour before registration begins. The site is spectacular. A 'rec center' recently built with an enormous outdoor swimming park, an indoor exploratorium with a play structure to rival any at Mac's or Burger King and a great hall with vaulted ceilings, a fire place, oversized tables with crisp, white Formica tops and enough room to host double the 86 we had in attendance that weekend. Name buttons were printed up for everyone, tables were clearly marked off by color for each division and a bowl of spice gum drops was placed in the middle of each table. There was a large room just outside the tourney room with chairs and tables and a kitchen for people to chat or relax in between games. Coffee was always available. It was truly lovely. The Look software program was used to adjudicate challenges. Before the first game started I was chatting with Lisa Odom and Joe and mentioned I was going to miss being able to shout "Challenge!" in the middle of games. There is something about being in the heat of the game and not liking a word and raising your hand with "Challenge!," and in moments a human being is standing right over you with the good book. I love that. Lisa smiled and waved her hand, "You can still call out 'challenge' Steph, just nobody will come." I laughed, but one woman really did do that at our table late in the day on Sunday. She was clearly tired and forgot and as all heads turned to stare at her for the obligatory three seconds I was soooo glad it wasn't me. Fortunately I was too busy screwing up games to forget how to initiate a challenge. It is a very nice Division A turnout. My club mates are some of the top players in the division; Jim Kramer, Lisa Odom and her very significant other, Steve Pellinen. Tim Adamson has made it down and Tim is a phenomenal player who has spent too much time directing tourneys this past year when he should have been playing in them. I'm not sure why, I'm leaning heavily toward conspiracy theories though, but Tim and I play each other fairly regularly at club. I have never beat him but I have never played a game with him where I didn't walk away with something that made me a stronger player next time I sat in front of a board. I found myself saying more than once, when someone commented on some unusual word I played, oh Tim played that against me at club. And I will never forget the one game we had together where he was drawing crap most of the game and I was pulling all the good stuff and I thought I was going to get him but he stuck with it and still managed to blow me out of the water. He dumped his vowels and dumped his vowels and exchanged when that didn't work and never whined or moaned or gave up and came out with two beautiful bingos at the very end that left me reeling. After that game I swore I would never complain about bad draws again. That was a while ago though. Division one is also hosting Joey Mallick, Joel Sherman, Chris Cree, Peter Armstrong and, last but certainly not least, Brian Cappelletto, others, of course, but this covers the top seeded players. Lisa is excited about the strong field, but I can tell also a little nervous. Jim is quietly setting out his tiles on his board and I go over to help him. I'm pretending to help anyway. I told him I just wanted to touch all his tiles, hoping some of his stuff would rub off on me. I only know two people in Division B, my club mate Joe Gaspard, who returned to SCRABBLE® after a long break about the same time last year as I started going to club regularly. Joe and I play a lot of online games with each other. I know if I could see the board half as well as Joe I would win many more games. During our online games he is always joking about playing through several letters on the board, "If I had a Y I could play SILLYSTRING through that triple." I win maybe ten percent of the games we play (if that), but I know my vision has improved since we started playing. The other Division B player I know is Scott Pianowski. Scott and I have been chatting about SCRABBLE® with one another off and on since my first tournament back in August. He's very knowledgeable and willing to help a newbie muddle through some of the muck. It's the first time since we started chatting with each other nine months ago that we have met in person. My roommate, Sue Rhea and I are the Minnesotans that round off Division C. Sue and I started attending club at the same time. I have taken the game way more seriously than she has however, and she has consistently outplayed me at both the tournaments we've played together. We are very evenly matched, and when it looks like the kids will go to bed at a decent hour and Gary is hooked up with some other activity on a Saturday evening, I will call Sue up and she will come over and we'll play games until the wee hours. She is young and single and just starting out and loves all the food I cook and eats whatever I put in front of her and always says yes when I ask her if I can make her tea and we have the same twisted sense of humor and when it gets late we laugh and just shut off the clock and show each other our racks and try and figure out the best plays. I study like crazy and Sue is swamped with work and shows up the morning of the tournament, barely switching hats before her clock is started. She complains about how ridiculous the game is and during the long weekend this tourney enforces random moratoriums on SCRABBLE® talk, but inevitably finds herself bringing the subject up without realizing she's breaking her own rule. We are driving to the tourney early in the morning on Sunday and Joe and I are talking about racks we had on Saturday and Sue hisses in disgust "It's 8:30 in the morning, listen to you two. STOP talking about IT!!!!" Five minutes later Joe and I will be discussing the gubernatorial race in St. Paul and Sue will interrupt, "This guy was ahead by a hundred and fifty points yesterday and I hooked a word on ED to make EDS just to get the game over with and he challenged! Can you believe that?" Joe and I stare at her. "You're talking about IT," I tell her. "Was he supposed to ignore your bad word?," Joe asks. "Well, YEAH! Okay, forget it, let's not talk about it anymore." Okay. Nobody really wants to read about how a 1013 player lost 13 of 20 games in C division. And after Chris's post about firsts/seconds I just counted up my firsts to see if maybe I had a good excuse for this sad performance, but alas, I went first ten times. Dang. Guess it's all about how I played the game then, isn't it? I can't do a true Berofsky and give you every game (even if I could you would run screaming through the streets). I am still not organized enough to get all my racks down, but I did manage a few. There are a couple of interesting games, and players. I'll do my best here to keep it light. I keep filling my color with color so I don't have to deal with the games. When I got home Monday night, I emailed Carol Dustin, my club director and mentor extraordinaire, and gave her a quick whinge about how depressed I was with how I did. She emailed me back a beautiful, vintage Carol reply (in edited form)-- "Your e-mail inspired an immediate bit of advice:Get depressed when you lose all your games. Get depressed when you come in last. Get depressed when your new rating takes you down a whole division. Get depressed when your luggage goes home on a different plane than you did...... ....To help overcome your depression: briefly console yourself for your bad luck, then try to identify your mistakes, and make improvements based on where you went wrong. Make a list of the words you learned at the tournament. Pat yourself on the back for the fine plays you did make. I'll bet you've already done all the above...."My hero. All of my very sweet friends have emailed me telling me they know I am not happy with winning only 7 games, but it is great I finished above my seed. I spose. I went into this tournament thinking that I win 50% of my games at club every Tuesday evening and many nights half of my games are against expert players. Here I am going into my fourth tournament with some studying under my belt, ranked in a group of my peers, so I am thinking I should put on a good show. Plus it's a long tournament. Lot's of games! Room to maneuver, and choke, and allow gravity to have its way with me. I find my opponent for the first game. She is sitting in front of her board. I introduce myself and she asks if I can come to her. I tell her of course and ask why, I am thinking she has some sort of physical ailment that is preventing her from getting out of her chair. "Just because I'm sitting here!" She laughed. I have this new custom board, as I mentioned earlier. It's beautiful. I love it. Not only that but I noticed during the last tournament that many of these players took one look at me and knew I would come sit at their boards without a peep. I know the rule about equipment and don't mean to start things off this way but when I find out she isn't suffering from arthritis or wheelchair bound I smile and tell her we can draw to see who goes first and then determine who's equipment we use. She seems put off by this. It would make her a lot happier if I just sat at her board. We draw tiles and she goes first. I move over to my board and she says "I thought whoever drew closest to A gets to choose equipment!" "Um. No. The rule is whoever goes second chooses equipment." Sue and Joe give me a hard time about making people draw for equipment. "Come on you guys, I like my board! Plus why do they all automatically think I should come to them? It gets psychological don't you think?" They stare at me blankly. I played one of my final games against a senior who had extra padding and blankets attached to his chair. His board was so old the plastic was a smokey yellow which almost hid the printing on the grid. I never once dreamed of making him count up his firsts to see whose equipment we played on. I just went over and sat down at his board. One of the best moments of the tournament for me was on that last morning. Sue and I were sharing a table. I have my custom board and I have given Sue my old setup so she has one of the beige background 1980's boards (in excellent condition) and a Samtimer that Steve has let her use for this tournament and a set of yellow Grand Canyon tiles I purchased on a whim and decided were too yellow for my new board. Sue's first opponent wants her to come over to her board. I have already started my game, but I can't help hear Sue say something about counting up firsts for equipment. I hear her opponent say "I think ROUND boards take precedent over SQUARE boards." I won't look directly at Sue because I know I'll start laughing. Sue insists on doing it properly. The woman is very unhappy about it. I am shuffling tiles on my rack and silently tell myself that if there is any justice in this world at all Sue will go second in that game. The woman does indeed have to come over to Sue's square board. I believe she also shellacked Sue, but that is hardly the point. My first opponent ends up coming over to my board and shellacking me, so maybe there is some lesson to be learned from all of this. I go second with the natural TRAWLERS played through the R in her opening move of PREEN. Not a bad start. She bingos several turns later with BEARINGS and I end up exchanging three times (one of them is probably a mistake) and losing 428-294. Okay. I actually spoke of a SCRABBLE® game in a SCRABBLE® post, so I feel as if I can go to bed for tonight without feeling too guilty. I will breeze through the rest of this tomorrow, and then satisfy the mild curiosity of the three people who email me and tell me they like these posts. Sadly, someone who shall remain nameless, (I will only say she is my fearless leader and mentor extraordinaire), emailed me this afternoon to tell me she deleted all of the pictures I took on her digital camera at the tournament. She's the director of my club so I have to forgive her, but no photos will accompany this article.
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PART THREE
So the first game is a bust. I end up picking up the second game and I'm proud of the win because she had both blanks (for a bingo each...okay Evan, bear with me...AIIRST? and EEGINM?) and I find the natural in CEIORST and hook it to form SKA, which my opponent challenges, so free turn for me). She also had the X and an S. She also unfortunately drew the Q at the end of the game. Her last rack was LOORRSQ with a locked up board. With the extra 22 off of her rack after I went out, I win this one 432-344. I try and console her about the Q stick. I should have been more sincere. Two out of my next three games it shows up on my rack with four tiles left in the bag. Game three is a heartbreaker. Helen opens with GAUDY and I have AHILRT? on my rack for my first move. I am shuffling stuff around and about to give up when I find HiLARITY to the Y. The adrenaline rush is very fine. Then Helen plays AZOTH threw the trip lane for 51 and I challenge. After I challenge (it's good) I think maybe I may have seen it before. I'm mad for giving her another turn after such a huge play. She gets JIN (28) for her freebie and I realize it's as if I just handed her a bingo with my challenge. I make a 20 point play and she throws down FOOTERS for 77. Ack. The adrenaline rush has evolved into a tightening of my chest. I make an exchange to balance my rack and one turn later get STEALER down and the seven I draw after STEALER gives me NOVICEs for my next play. But I am still only up by 28. We go back and forth with some plays (she draws the X) but I have a decent 31 point play with PEH, and then with four tiles left in the bag I draw the Q. There is no play at all, I definitely will have to eat it. We end the game with 418 for me and 417 for Helen, then she gets 26 for the Q and M on my rack. "Now, what you do," Helen tells me as we sign our paperwork, "is get your name up there under High Loss, you are going to get a prize for that!" She was very adamant about it. I want to tell her I don't want a prize. I want the game back. Had I not challenged AZOTH I might have been able to eat the Q and still win. Who knows, of course, maybe if I took my turn I would not have drawn my bingos either. The fourth game I am up by 50 to move 5, then I exchange EEEOI, which leads me to believe I must have had one or two vowels still on my rack as well), the exchange didn't seem to pay off as well as I would have hoped because I see that my next move is VAV for 18. Marlys gets BrACELeT down for 78 and there go both blanks. The bingo throws her 40 points into the lead and I huff and puff a bit and get close, but in the end she takes it by 30 points, 370-340. Lunch. I'm one and three. I think Sue is three and one. Joe wins all four of them, but would never volunteer this information and shrugs matter of factly when he tells me after I ask. "Way to go Gaspard." He shrugs again. We pile into his tiny Honda and can't find the Quizno's we wanted to eat at so end up at Subway instead. Lisa and Steve and Joey come in shortly after us. Steve and I have the same record, and will continue to have the same record throughout most of the tournament. The only difference, of course, is that Steve is getting beat by some of the best players in the world. Too bad I can't play up two divisions at the Nationals. I'm bound to get a lucky in here and there and would save some face too. I win my first one after lunch. 374-309. She actually had a good chunk of the choice tiles, but I put my one blank and Q to good use with SQuIRE for 78 pts. I win game six as well. My opponent is having a bad tourney and is also suffering (she tells me after the game) from kidney stones, for which she has taken some morphine. Hey. I'll take that win any way I can get it. At one point I am toying with the idea of putting UNFILeS down. I actually have it down, but have not hit my clock. I am thinking it's not good and my opponent says "Oh, go ahead, I won't challenge." The morphine talking, no doubt. I look up at her in disbelief. "Oh. Okay. 72 then," and hit my clock. I draw the Q at the end of this game as well, but there is an O and a U with a space between them (a pink space!) and I actually have the R and E to complete the set and get ROQUE down for 32. She gets a very pretty UNSIzED down for 72, but probably due to excruciating pain and the hallucinatory effects of the barbiturate she was on, she lost by 35 points. It wasn't pretty, but I felt like I could turn things around if I kept at it, or at least if my next opponent had accidentally taken a hit of LSD during lunch break. Unfortunately Edie is very alert and ready to rumble. She gets OUTgRIN down on her second turn and I exchange EO my first, then UEA my third turn, then EEEQ my 7th turn. I'm pretty sure when I exchanged EEEQ I left an E on my rack. I can never get it going and Edie takes it 402-320. I lose game 8 and get nothing interesting down. Ellen finds UNTESTED her second go and then third move to last puts down ReLiABLE to end what was, up to that point, a close race. 385-330. End of day one. I'm three and five and not really interested in hashing over much of it. I'm starving and ready for a drink. Joe and Sue and I end up at some steakhouse, where Sue puts one of her many moratoriums on game talk, so we talk about our favorite movies. Joe mentions Tootsie at some point and our waiter begins reciting lines, verbatim, from the movie. I saw the movie so long ago I can barely remember what it is about. When I mention one of my favorite movies is Buckaroo Banzai I get the twin blank stares from Joe and Sue again. The waiter frowns a little and clears our plates away. I ask if I can talk about SCRABBLE® again. Sunday I let Sue and Joe sleep a little later. We find a pancake house on the way to the rec center. Joe and I order the same thing every morning. Sue orders a variety of carbohydrates. I keep telling her she needs to eat more protein. Sue always travels with sugar and has brought a huge bag of Sprees with her to the tournament room. We have replaced our little Styrofoam bowl of spiced gum drops with plain and peanut M&M's (a little more hormonal friendly). Game 9 is a bust, and I'm not sure how stupid I was about it. Marlon would say VERY stupid I'm assuming, after that last post of his. My op is first, of course, since I have JAILORs on my rack. His opening move is BANNED. Ack. What a sweet rack to break up. I decide to give the ol' pass a try. He slaps down COWAGES for 52. I have no idea about the word and there is no hook for my bingo. I should have made a J play instead of passing. He has 76 points while I have zero because I'm admiring a bingo I will never get to play. I manage HITTERs turn five though and am only down by 35. He finds a nice Z play and I am really down until I get OUTsIDE for 79 and this brings me six points into the lead. It also opens up that bottom middle triple (it was the ONLY hook I had, and it was so late in the game I was lucky to have that) and he plays his Q for 44pts. Game over. Bob takes it 392-369. Bob was also kind enough to let me in on his strategy when I passed. "I wasn't sure about COWAGES but I figured the worse thing that could happen is that you would challenge it off and then just be back to where you didn't want to be anyway." Good thinking Bob, good game too. COWAGES is good, by the way. Game 10 I lose by one point. It was such a sweet game too. Her third turn she tries CARTFULS and I challenge it off. No worries though, two turns later she has eNTAILs, and both blanks gone now. I get BEATED* down for 47 points and the cheap XI play for 36 and right after that MENTORS for 76. Roberta isn't worried though because she finds the most excellent LUMINOUS through an O, a tight spot too, for 84. At the end of turn 9 I am ahead 293-272. I keep my lead until the game is over. When she gets an extra 20 points from me for the Q I drew with, yes, four tiles left in the bag. Roberta's game 392-391. Ken walks over and says "Ohhh, did you do the recount?" and then quickly covered his mouth as if he'd said a bad word. I was still staring down at the score sheet trying to figure out if I could have done something different. Roberta waved her hand and shook her head "Oh, I'm not going to get into that," and then when I looked up at her she said "But I guess it isn't up to me." I told her it wasn't, but couldn't bring myself to make a stink about it and let it go. Later everybody asked why I didn't ask for a recount. Jim Kramer and Tim Adamson were nice enough to give Joey and I a ride to the airport on the last day. When I asked how all these experts felt about recounts (most of them were for them, five points or less) Tim leaned over his seat and said, "Stephanie you should always ask for a recount in that situation in your division where people aren't adding their own totals as they go along." I know this is right. I have just gotten to the point where I am adding my op's totals after they do in order to verify, but most people in those divisions don't, they just take your word for it, unless it sounds off to them. It's all spilt milk now, of course, but it was another game I hated to lose. Game 11 I manage to win 353-299. It wasn't pretty though. I played GYRATERs knowing it was probably not going to make it and she let it stay. Game 12 with the woman who ends up Division champ. She's a fine player and it was a close game. We were getting to the bottom of the bag and I looked to see what was left and knew an S was still out, but everything else looked ugly. I thought I would be able to catch up (I was only down by 13, and who knows, maybe the S was in the bag and not on her rack) and then she throws down OILIEST for a sweet 66 and moves on to her next victim. That vision thing keeps coming to mind. Being able to see not only what is right there in front of you, but what, ultimately could be in front of you once the bag is emptied out. I could have shut the line down, there was only one. Betzy is a very nice woman though and played well and earned all of her success. When she claimed her $600 at the award ceremony she waved it over her head and said "900 Canadian!" We find Quizno's on Sunday, and I have to say, their sandwiches are much better than Subway. I win my next two (games 13 and 14). The beauty of such a long tournament is that I really didn't keep track of my win/loss record while I was playing. I was more aware of what level of frustration I was coming into a game from. I tried very hard to erase it all when I sat down at the new game, but it is difficult to ignore a streak, good or bad. Game 13 I open with WOOZY(48). I love getting that kind of start. My op exchanges two tiles twice in a row. He also discovers the dish of M&M's on the table and begins to eat them compulsively. I am glad he enjoys them. He puts down ROTWOOD(26). Not a bingo, and I'm not sure about it, but it sounds plausible. Two turns later I hook ESQuIRE onto ROTWOOD for 83 points. He picks up LIGNITES(74) a couple of turns later, then right after that JEBEL for only 20, but this boy is pulling out some words on me. I hold here and there but challenge nothing. I win the game 378-299. When I returned to my board after turning in the paperwork Bob Denn (the lead director of the tournament) was looking it over. "Hmmm," he has his hand on his chin thoughtfully, "ROTWOOD?" I tell him I wasn't sure, but then it sounded okay, and look at how I hooked it for all those points. Bob looks it up and it's a phony. My op must have thought it was good too, since he never challenged. LIGNITE and JEBEL are both good. Game 14 Rosetta and I are pulling all the vowels left and right at the beginning. I finally change once (IIUE) and two turns later get CARPETs down. She is making some nice 30ish point plays. I exchange 5, and nab the Q. Early enough to play it. ROQUE is down on the board again. At one point Rosetta goes to play some three letter word that ends in T to make ROQUET, and then she mumbles to herself "Better not do that." and makes a different play. Well, I like the 18 points for the play and take it. Rosetta pulled her ROQUET play because, wise woman that she is, she SAW that a C could hook on top of that word to work straight through a trip for a truckload of points. Who has the C next turn? I'd much rather play CRAW for 18. I couldn't even count up the points I missed with my myopic vision. I lucked out and found BEGONIAS(something is a blank there) through the trip third to last play and won 366-335. Game 15 I lost by three points. It was the second to last game and I was way tired and couldn't bring myself to ask for a recount. Game 16 is neck and neck all the way down to turn 12, when Steve plays DrILlER for 69. His game 382-325. End of day two. 6 and 10. Joe is having a wonderful tournament, but shows no giddiness whatsoever. Sue has taken a toll for the worse and is not doing quite as badly as I am, maybe one game better, but her spread is bad. One advantage of all the close games, my spread at the end of two days winning only 6 out of 16 games was -144. We pile into the Honda. Everybody is a bit dazed. Sue wants to go find the lake and walk for a while. I want to eat and drink. Joe will do anything it seems. "Can you please light a cigarette?" I have been inhaling deeply every time Joe lights up. I quit smoking five years ago, but still miss it terribly and love the way it smells. During the tournament I will occasionally go out and find Gaspard smoking and wave his hand in front of my nose. "Ahhhhhh, god that's heaven." We make it to the lake, or a little section of it anyway. There is a tiny beach and the late afternoon haze of sun and a warm breeze blowing off the water. If there was a concession stand with Dewar's for sale I maybe could have hung out there for a long while. We found an Irish Pub in Evanston, which in fact did offer Dewar's and had some good food, decent second hand smoke and fine board game conversation. Pianowski is staying in the same hotel we are in. I've asked him to come make us even for a couple of games before bed. And even though Sue SWORE she would not play another game of SCRABBLE® until Monday morning, she is sitting on the bed with Joe shuffling tiles at 10pm. Scott and I are playing on this cramped, tiny table. I made Sue green tea and the rest of us are drinking beer and wine. Scott is mentoring me through our game (I am asking for his help), and gets bold and sticks a G out in the trip toward the end of the game. I play ENCODING to the G for 89, but Scott still beats me handily. I think Joe beats Sue, who has had his number for a while now. We chat for some time and then Scott thanks us for the company and leaves. Sue reads a magazine in bed and I put Houston Person in my CD player and drift off to Late Night Lullaby. Not before I bargain with the SCRABBLE® gods though. I decide I will be ecstatic if I break even. I want to win all four on Monday. (I had NO idea I was getting into a FOUR part series here! My apologies to the list, and Stell----I wanna RAISE)Back to top